Illustrations
GALLERY ONE
1.1. Map of Koons and Tippie migrations, 1835–58
1.2. Jonathan and Abigail Bishop Koons, ca. 1852–55
1.3. Jonathan Koons and Nahum Ward Koons, ca. 1852–55
1.4a. Tombstones in Koons Cemetery, 1939
1.4b. Vista of Koons Cemetery, 1939
1.4c. Headstone of George S. Koons, 1939
1.4d. Headstone of Filenia E. Koons, 1939
1.5. Ohio University President Alfred Ryors, 1848–52
1.6. Map of Native American earthworks, Athens County, 1848
GALLERY TWO
2.1. Maggie and Kate Fox, 1852
2.2. Spirit machine of Jonathan Koons, 1852
2.3. Diagram of Koons Spirit Room in 1852
2.4. Fiddle played by Jonathan Koons in 1852
2.5. Message from the angel Oress, from an 1853 publication
2.6. Nahum’s drawing of heaven, 1853
GALLERY THREE
3.1. Jonathan Koons on formal occasion, undated
3.2. William Denton, ca. 1855–65
3.3. The Davenport brothers, as depicted in a 1902 book
3.4. Nancy Jane Koons, Jonathan’s second wife, photograph taken before May 1865
3.5. Spiritualist tabernacle built on Mount Nebo ca. 1871
3.6. Landscape of Mount Nebo, 1947
3.7. The Primal Church of the Blake Recital, late twentieth century
3.8. Pageant dancer at Golgonooza, late twentieth century
3.9. Shirley Tinkham and the author at the Koons Cemetery, 2014
3.10. Historic home in Ames Township on the site where John Tippie Jr. opened a log spirit room in 1854
Preface
When I moved to Athens, Ohio, in 1985, I had no idea that one day I would explore what a nineteenth-century commentator has called “the weird celebrity” of the place. As a new arrival from my native Virginia, I thought it was a just a picturesque, progressive city where I would eventually earn a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University. Only in 2010, as an author and longtime Athens County resident, did I turn to explore the deeper history of my adopted home. That was when I settled on researching the medium Jonathan Koons, a life that continues to intrigue me even after several years.
I had first learned of Koons through the local newspapers while in graduate school. Around Halloween time he would dutifully take his place in a recap of Athens County’s spooky stories—haunted cemeteries linked by a pentagram, the abandoned insane asylum overlooking the city of Athens, and of course his own dark séances where ghostly musicians played and instruments floated about the room. But in those pre-internet days I could scarcely imagine that Athens would eventually gain notice online as one of the “most haunted” places in the United States. Not until I began my recent study did I learn of Koons’s contribution to the mystique—some would say superstition—that has attached itself to the area. For he drew hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people to Athens County in the 1850s with the promise of reconnecting them with dead loved ones, thus putting the locale on the map of the spiritualist press. It was from the rocks and forests—the very landscape itself—that psychic forces were able to gather strength, or so the theory went. This idea has persisted for at least 165 years—and perhaps much longer, if one considers legends about Native Americans in this place.
Yet Jonathan Koons has no mention in the standard history books of Athens County, Ohio; he lives on mostly through oral tradition. Not surprisingly, that tradition has reshuffled facts even as it has enlarged certain themes and diminished others, memorializing yet obscuring the person who lived here. What’s more, the story of Koons’s wife, Abigail Bishop Koons, is a wisp of smoke compared to that of her husband, not due to any lack on her part but the sheer fact that the nineteenth century was indeed a man’s world in which women’s lives were seldom detailed—or their names even mentioned—in published sources. From the scraps of information available, it is clear that Abigail and Jonathan were full partners as together they explored the counterculture of their time.
When I began looking into the Koons story, I thought I would be writing a book about psychic abilities—traits that the Koons family was said to possess. I thought I would use my journalistic skills and the latest research to find out exactly what was genuine and what was false about the Koons phenomena. But I soon realized that the story was as much, or more, about the power of ritual and belief than about an actual physical reality. Some visitors to the Koons séances reported transformative encounters, whether their perceptions were “real” or not. For that reason I do not presume to judge the validity of the religious experiences reported in this book. To avoid a ponderous writing style, I decided not to overuse qualifiers such as purportedly and supposedly in every account of what visitors to the Koons séances saw or heard. I invite readers to enter the sphere of the nineteenth-century spiritualists and look at the world the way they saw it—playful, mysterious, and ultimately kind.
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